The integration of faith and learning is a focus of many religious institutions of higher education

Higher education

Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...

. The broad concept encompasses the idea that the worldview and faith of the student should be deeply connected to the learning experience. This idea is commonly found in Christian colleges in the United States, and is considered by some to be the essence of Christian higher education.

History

Higher education in the United States began largely as a Christian endeavor. Nearly all of the colleges founded during the colonial period were founded and supported by the dominant Christian denomination

Christian denomination

A Christian denomination is an identifiable religious body under a common name, structure, and doctrine within Christianity. In the Orthodox tradition, Churches are divided often along ethnic and linguistic lines, into separate churches and traditions. Technically, divisions between one group and...

s of the time. Some scholars claim that the current model of American higher education is convoluted because it has worked to separate faith from learning, while others see keeping religion as a part of the institutional as necessarily delivering bias instead of creating an open search for truth.